Professor Thomas Harrison’s obituary for P. S. Derow [21 December] captured well the genial essence of the man, writes Professor Anthony Snodgrass, yet omitted one area of his subject’s vigorous activity: Derow’s work for the movement to reunite the Parthenon Marbles in Athens.

Peter did not merely support this cause, but promoted it so forcefully that, on one occasion when a trustee of the British Museum was a guest at a dinner in Wadham College and confronted Peter, the alarmed trustee withdrew in such dismay as to make him later renege on a proffered lunch meeting with another campaigner (myself). So I never got to hear what exactly Peter had said to him, but clearly it exemplified that strength of opinion which, though usually cloaked by geniality, was equally central to his character.

Many Ethiopian artefacts have been removed from the country at different points in history & now sit amongst the collections of individuals & private institutions around the world.
Professor Richard Pankhurst looks at what the future might hold for some of these cases.

As the Ethiopian Millennium – which is nothing if not a cultural manifestation – approaches, today would seem an appropriate time to discuss the long-drawn-out question of Ethiopia’s cultural restitution.

This question has come to the fore on a number of occasions – and does so once more in the run-up to the New Ethiopian Millennium!Read the rest of this entry »

P. S. Derow was a specialist in the history of the Hellenistic world, who was well known for a number of acute and powerful contributions to the history of Rome’s conquest of the Greeks. He was most recognised, however, as an outstanding Oxford tutor – who inspired the careers of an extraordinary proportion of those ancient historians and classicists active today.Read the rest of this entry »

December 19, 2006

Dr Stephen Heyworth, a colleague of Peter Derow gave an address at his funeral last weekend which was both a moving & amusing insight into the life of the historian who had campaigned for the return of the Parthenon Marbles.
Peter had been a founding member of the Parthenon 2004 campaign, now known as Marbles Reunited.

Well, the cat-in-the-hat, that legendary figure, is dead. I had better explain. I use that name not only because it avoids my having to make Peter the subject of that sentence, but also because the cat-in-the-hat crystallizes a number of things I want to say.

Firstly, Peter loved the Dr Seuss books, especially the first. And in his room, among the many other curiosities and toys, high up on the stack of videos, sits a figure of the cat-in-the-hat. More importantly, he was a great giver of gifts: I’m told he gave Cath Forrest, George’s daughter, her first camera and set her on the path to photography. One gift he often gave was copies of these books: he kept a stock for when he found a friend or a pupil who didn’t know them at all. So ten years ago, he gave a copy to my daughters; and on Friday afternoon last week, when we were thanking the two student hosts for looking after the candidates, Josie took away a bottle of the burgundy we’ll have a chance to drink later, and Sophie two Dr Seuss books. My daughters’ copy is inscribed in Peter’s beautiful italic hand: ‘To Lucy and Harriet from the funny dancing man’ [I think the dance was the one from Zorba, but I’ve not got time today to go into his love of films] ‘… from the funny dancing man a.k.a. … the Cat-in-the-Hat’. He loved the precise rhymes and the surprising rhythms of the books, but I suspect it was the anarchic morality of the narrative that appealed to him most: he truly knew how to have ‘fun that is funny'; and that’s what lies behind his self-identification with the cat-in-the-hat. But anarchic bringer of fun though he was, like the cat at the end of the book, he could also tidy up the mess; one would see him the morning after Classics drinks in the garden picking up glasses and cigarette butts; but I mean more than that-he gave his time and his care to helping us clear up the messes that we can all make of our own and each others’ lives. But I’ll return to that theme.Read the rest of this entry »

The British Museum (in its caring friendly role that it adopts only when its own collection is not at stake) has highlighted the worrying scale of the trade in illicit artefacts on Ebay, the online auction site.

The Times
December 18, 2006Illicit artefacts sold as eBay turns blind eye
Dalya Alberge, Arts Correspondent
# 3,500 items for sale in two months
# Sellers claim to have obeyed the law

Roman and Anglo-Saxon jewellery and other artefacts are still being sold illegally on eBay, despite the website’s promise to clamp down on the trade.

The British Museum has told The Times that it is alarmed at the number of sellers offering gold and silver that has apparently been found on British soil but has not been reported.Read the rest of this entry »

Sir, Dalya Alberge’s judgment that the Greeks have failed to reclaim the Elgin Marbles, from the British Museum must be viewed as strictly interlocutory (report, Dec 13). The Greek claim, dating from 1842, has been renewed by Britons and Greeks of every subsequent generation, and will not be over until it’s over.

The Getty Museum’s decision to return two more ancient artefacts to Greece, together with the return earlier this year of pieces from the Parthenon and the Erechtheion formerly in German and Swedish ownership, adds to the mounting pressure on the trustees of the British Museum to abandon their dismissive attitude to Greek proposals for the relocation of the Elgin Marbles to the magnificent new Acropolis Museum, which will open in Athens in a few months’ time.Read the rest of this entry »

December 15, 2006

The Orthodox Archbishop of Athens has raised the issue with Pope Benedict of the return of a piece of the Parthenon currently in the Vatican Museum. The Pope says that he will consider the request.
The success of this request is a lot more likely following the return of the Heidelberg fragment earlier this year, which represented the first time that a foreign institution had returned part of the Parthenon sculptures to Greece.

VATICAN CITY (Reuters) – Greece’s top religious leader asked Pope Benedict on Thursday to return a piece of the Parthenon in the Vatican Museums, Greek officials said.

Christodoulos, Orthodox archbishop of Athens and of all Greece, made the request during a visit when he and the Pope signed a joint declaration on issues of common concern, such as the defense of life.Read the rest of this entry »

LONDON The Greeks may have failed to reclaim the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum, but they scored a significant victory yesterday when the J. Paul Getty Museum in Los Angeles took the dramatic step of returning two important antiquities.

A gold funerary wreath, c320-300BC, and a marble statue of a Kore, c530BC — both jewels of the Getty’s collection — are going home after the Greek Culture Ministry proved that they had been excavated illegally.Read the rest of this entry »

(CNN) — She’s 2,500 years old, stunningly beautiful and at the center of the latest smuggling scandal to have sullied the world of antiquities.

On Monday the Los Angeles-based J. Paul Getty Museum announced it would return a sixth century B.C. marble statue of a young woman to Greece following claims by the Greek government that the artwork was illegally excavated and taken out of the country without proper authority.Read the rest of this entry »

December 12, 2006

Following various disagreements in the past, where Greece & Italy had both laid claim to the same artefact in a foreign museum, the two countries have now agreed to cooperate & avoid making any further contradictory claims.

Pooling their resources and diplomatic clout, Greece and Italy plan to forge a formal alliance to pursue the return of ancient artifacts from museums in the United States and Europe, the Greek culture minister has said.

The agreement, which he expects to complete in early 2007, would cement recent collaboration between the two countries as both pursue increasingly muscular campaigns to get back prized Greek and Roman antiquities. Greece especially is focusing on recovering the Elgin Marbles from the British Museum.Read the rest of this entry »